On Blue's waters

“Most people are still asleep.” I turned to Evensong. “Will you give her that box to keep the cosmetics in?”

She nodded.

Mehman’s daughter knocked again, and I told Mehman to admit them, adding to Jahlee, “When they come in, you are to leave immediately.”

She did, favoring the humble woman and her little son with a flashing smile in which no actual teeth were to be seen, and running across the soft green grass with one hand clapped to the traveling hat and Evensong’s gown flowing and floating around her.

Mehman made obeisance. “My daughter Zeehra, Rajan. My grandson Lal.”

His daughter looked askance at Evensong and me, plainly dressed and soaked to the skin, before bowing almost to the ground.

“The rani and I were discussing an expansion of the herb beds with your father when we were caught in the rain,” I explained.

Little Lal started to speak, but was hushed at once by his mother.

“We are about to return to the palace,” I continued, “but there is something of importance I must tell you first. Your father will confirm what I say after I leave, I feel certain. The woman whom I dismissed as you came in is not to be trusted. I would not wish you to think, because you saw her with my wife and me, that she is someone I trust, someone to whom you ought to defer.”

Evensong surprised me by saying, “She is a thief and worse than a thief.”

“Exactly.” I stood. “The two-hands spider kills our rats, but it remains a spider.”

“You’re the Decider,” little Lal burst out. “The other people talk and talk, then you decide.”

“I am,” I told him, “but I can’t decide everything. You must decide whether to obey your mother, for example-and accept the consequences if you don’t. What would you do, Lal, if that woman in the red gown came to your door?”

“I wouldn’t let her in,” he declared stoutly.

“Very good,” I said. “In time you may be an important and respected man like your grandfather.”

That was four days ago. Jahlee may have been active. I hope so, but I have heard nothing.

My wound seems worse, Evensong says from the rain but I think it is actually from the strain of lifting that big flagstone in the market. Maybe it is for the best that we have no news about Jahlee.

This rain makes my ankle ache.

If I were to give every detail of the painfully slow voyage that Seawrack, Krait, Babbie, and I made up the river, I would use up as much again of this thin rice paper as I have consumed already.

Which is too much. Paper is dear here, and I have several times come close to proposing that we build our own mill. The Cataracts (upper or lower) would supply far more water power than our little stream on Lizard Island. But it is out of the question as long as the fighting continues, and as soon as it ends I will go.

A lot of paper, and to confess the truth it would have a good deal of interest written on it. On the lower reaches around Wichote, the lack of winds was the chief problem. The river was very wide there; even so, the center of its stream offered few such winds as one hopes for, and often gets, at sea; and when we tried to tack, whatever wind there was generally died away altogether as we appreached the thickly wooded banks. The current was slow, however, and what progress we made was often made with Babbie and me at the sweeps. Earlier I recorded my dismay when Krait said we might be in Pajarocu in ten days. I need not have worried, and after a good long session with the sweeps I would gladly have arrived that very instant if it had been possible. There were many days on which we could see the point at which we had dropped anchor the day before when we stopped for the evening meal.

Somewhere I should say that we were attacked only once. Half a dozen men, perhaps, swam out to our boat while Krait was away and Seawrack and I were sleeping. Babbie and a couple of shots from the slug gun routed them, and one left behind a long knife that became Seawrack’s tool and weapon thereafter. Basically, no harm was done; but it taught me to anchor well away from shore on those rivers, as I invariably did from that time forward. As an added precaution, I made it a set rule to travel some little distance after we had finished our evening meal and put out the fire in the sandbox, and not to drop anchor until full darkness had arrived and the place could not easily be observed.

Having found Pajarocu, Krait visited it almost every night; and I assumed that he was feeding there as well. He asked for and received my permission to leave us if it appeared that the lander was about to fly. In return, he assured me repeatedly that he would continue to guide us, faithful to the promise he had made when he rescued me from the pit, so long as it did not mean that he himself would miss the lander.